'What's the matter?' she asked, seeing him fully dressed.
'We've got to get out of here.'
'Why?' Still sleepy.
'Goodenache's dead.'
'What?' she exclaimed, waking instantly and sitting up. The blanket fell away from her, revealed her nakedness.
'You're beautiful!' Adam leaned down and kissed her left breast.
'Adam!' She covered herself in her forty two year old embarrassment. 'For God's sake!'
He laughed and stood up. He'd forgotten death wasn't part of her every day vocabulary. 'I'm sorry. Come on. Get dressed.'
'You serious?'
He nodded.
'How?'
'Same way as Trimmler.'
'Oh no!' She looked shattered. Then she swung her legs out of the bed and hurriedly got dressed. Adam packed his few belongings, then went next door and did the same for Billie. When he returned with her case, she was ready and he led her down the hall, through the emergency exit, past the sleeping night porter in his little room and into the car park.
It had started to snow and the thin white covering reflected the lights of the two police cars as they swept down Yorckstrasse towards the hotel. They didn't need their sirens at this time of the night.
Adam grabbed Billie and hid her behind the Audi, glad that he'd chosen a four wheel drive Quattro. He unlocked the car, clicked off the interior light and pushed her across to the passenger seat. He threw the two bags in the back and climbed in, pulling the door shut behind him.
'Down!' he commanded as the first police car pulled up outside the Kurhotel entrance, its lights illuminating the car park. Two policeman climbed out as the second car arrived, and when the four officers had gathered, they entered the hotel.
'Why don't we just brave it out?' asked Billie.
'They'd never believe us. What with Trimmler in New Orleans and Goodenache here. Would you?' He saw it made her think for a moment, about him. 'Don't be stupid. I was with you.'
She didn't reply and Adam saw she was desperately trying to believe him.
'I didn't. And if I had, I wouldn't have called the police. Come on, love. It's called a frame up.'
'Means you're stuck with me.'
'I've worked that one out already.'
He switched the engine on and swung the Audi out of the car park, down Yorckstrasse towards the outskirts of the city. He stayed on the wrong side of the road, followed the tracks recently made by the police cars as they drove through the snow. The last thing he wanted to do was leave a trail for them.
It was two in the morning.
It was a long drive to Dresden.
The snow continued to fall as the Quattro clawed its way eastward towards whatever it was that they were seeking, whatever terrible things were waiting at journey's end.
Ch. 65
You could tell nobody was welcome just by looking at the building. The metal shutters on the windows and behind the doors of the four storey grey structure were designed to keep out unnecessary callers. There was no-one in reception, but if a stranger entered, he would soon find himself in the company of a gentleman in a blue suit with a friendly smile on his face and a bulge under his coat.
The roof bristled with antennae, of all shapes and sizes, tuned to a variety of radio signals and wavebands. This was a building of secrets, a part of British Military intelligence, but not linked to Cheltenham's GCHQ, and a place for only the most covert communications.
There had been some concern in the early Eighties, when one of the national dailies, Today, moved its headquarters into the next door building. After the initial flurry that prompted an internal memo warning staff not to fraternise with their neighbours, things soon returned to normal. The newspaper eventually followed others into the Docklands print centres that were fashionable at the time, and 66 Vauxhall Bridge Road returned to its position of anonymity.
As the black chauffeur driven Jaguar pulled up outside, Coy came into the reception area to wait for his guest. The DDI climbed out of the car and walked into the building, past the smiling man in the blue suit who held the door open for him.
Coy took the American up to a meeting room on the third floor. There was a folder on the large mahogany table in the room with the red wax seal of the United States Government.
'Would you like me to leave you for a while?' Coy asked.
'No need,' replied the DDI as he took a seat and waved Coy to the opposite side of the table. The DDI pulled the folder to him, snapped the seal and opened it. It had been delivered from the American Embassy for his attention twenty minutes earlier. He wasn't worried about security, the seal ensured that.
Inside the folder were two sheets of faxed paper. He flicked through them, then threw them down on the table. 'Nothing. Not a fucking thing,' he cursed.
'A communication from America?' Coy murmured
'An admission of failure. That's what you get when you stick the administrators in charge. No offence, Charlie.'
He knew that Coy was an administrator who he had never been in the field either as a soldier or as an agent. But then Coy was there because he was a high ranking nobody. The British had obviously decided to wash their hands of the whole affair. Coy was there to assuage the American's ego, to help without being too helpful. What his masters didn't know was that when Coy had worked in Washington for six years as a junior military attache in the British Embassy, the DDI was one of the young Americans he had befriended. They had both been nobody's then.
'None taken, Norman.' As he spoke he remembered his nickname from the wild days. Stormin' Norman. In those days it reflected his ability in bed. Coy saw the attitude still applied to his old friend.
'Yeah. We got nothing over there. What about you?'
'They confirmed that his arms were cut off. And placed in the shape of a swastika.'
'Jesus. These arseholes are perverted.'
'Or they're trying to tell us something.'
'Come on, Charlie. You've been sitting behind a desk for too long. 'Course they're trying to tell us something.' He leant forward confidingly. 'Have you spoken to our friend?'
'This morning. Before I came in.'
'From home?'
'Yes.'
'Where was he?'
'In the office.'
'Fucking amazing. That you can just ring right through to his office. What did he say?'
'He sends his regards.'
'Come on.'
'He's aware of everything. And is following it up.'
'Good.' He leant back in the chair. 'Nothing further from Germany?'
'No.'
'Take me through what you have. Just in case we got conflicting stories.' He picked up the papers he had discarded and laid them out so that he could check his own reports while Coy spoke to him.
'The police got a phone call saying somebody'd been murdered in the Kurhotel.' Coy pulled a report from his pocket and put it down so that he could use it as a reference. 'They arrived ten minutes later. They had no idea who'd been killed. After arguing with the night porter for another ten minutes, they worked their way up floor by floor. Just knocked on doors and waited for people to answer. The night porter used a passkey for those rooms that were empty or where no-one answered. They found Albert Goodenache on the fourth floor. Time was recorded as two twenty-five a.m.'
'Anything unusual in the room?'
'No. Well, apart from our man with his arms cut off and placed in the shape of a swastika. They found that rather unusual.'
'You're in a god-damned humorous mood today, Charlie.'
'I'm sorry. This whole affair's got to me. Nothing fits.'
'Everything fits. In the end. Go on.'
'No, there was nothing else unusual. He was naked and his throat had also been cut. I suppose that's because they had to kill him first. You don't chop off a man's arms while he's sitting there watching you.'